ERIC KOHN ON 'PASSION'According to the tweet above, Indiewire's Eric Kohn attended a screening of Kim Ki-duk's Pieta this morning at the Toronto Film Festival. Kohn also posted his review of De Palma's Passion today, stating that the film "simultaneously parodies its plot while elevating it to a strangely involving exercise in cinematic drama." Kohn's headline states that Passion will please Brian De Palma fans, "and no one else." Here is a paragraph:

"As the friction between the two women builds, Passion develops the aura of a sultry noir replete with increasingly depraved acts driven by furious envy and ego. With the motives of both characters continually ambiguous, the sleek melodrama takes prominence over plot specifics. De Palma's screenplay is less insightful than the hyperbolic mood pushing it along: Cinematographer José Luis Alcaine, best known for filming numerous Pedro Almodovar movies, draws out the absurd soapiness of the scenario with brightly lit scenes seemingly lifted from a fashion commercial not unlike the material produced by Christine's firm. The movie inhabits the same artificiality it critiques."

"But the real film legacy project here at TIFF is Brian De Palma's Passion—for me, the film (or, actually, video) of the festival so far. It is an old man's movie par excellence, taking film history as the subject of a work of cinema that would better fit within the context of the experimental works in the Wavelengths section than in the multiplex in which it was shown, seemingly baffling an audience expecting a semblance of realism from the screen. Its oldmanness is the deep, precise pursuit of the conventions of the cinema De Palma has been engaging with for the length of his career, and thereby engaging his career itself.

A remake of the solid Alain Corneau corporate thriller Love Crime, De Palma plunges without hesitation into the iconography, audience expectations, and conventions of noirs, sex thrillers, corporate intrigue, post-Hitchcock films and Brian De Palma movies themselves, retaining the shell appearance of all of these things but hollowing them from the inside out. The result is something out of late Resnais—a study of a study. And that study, of course, is of the cinema image. Remember how Rebecca Romijn watches Stanwyck in Double Indemnity at the beginning of Femme Fatale, as if taking notes? The characters in Passion have taken notes from Femme Fatale: an abstraction based on a fiction based on a fantasy. It is complex, dextrous, and awkward: Rachel McAdams plays and acts the seductive, power hungry blonde in a performance that is like a kabuki imitation of the type; Noomi Rapace is her underling, friend, object of love and obsession, our heroine and, therefore, at first, directed to act “normally.” (This film's skewering of cinematic female friendship is twisted, sinister, cynical and terribly interesting.) Like in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, but far more knowingly, cleverly, the director is here forcing a confrontation between two entirely different acting styles and kinds of characters. In Passion, one is ostensibly a hollow signifier, the other our, the audience's, psychological subject, person of empathy. Except the film, lurchingly structured in three fascinating sections, with the middle one styled radically differently, introduces a third character, another woman (which brings the collection to: a blonde, a brunette and a redhead), who begins to appear more normal as Rapace's character enters deeper into the story and begins to be abstracted by the movements and conventions of her plot. We lose our focus on one as another comes in. Where the film leaves us, after developing this schema and then following its "thrills" to the end, is truly disturbing.

I feel like I could talk about this movie forever—it comes so welcome after, in Cannes, suffering through the shockingly disrespectful cultural and cinematic ignorance on display in another ostensibly generic, and homage filled film, John Hillcoat's deplorable Lawless. De Palma's film is suffuse with a deep knowledge film history and aesthetics, and, in yet another remarkable engagement with digital video (after his first foray in his last film, Redacted), has constructed a film that questions our expectations, understanding, interest, empathy and perspective on them. The lucid, confrontational clarity of the digital images renders the film's hermetic artifice—despite being often photographed on location—even more dissonant, heightened and abstract. The archness of the film is absolute. It is a work of cinephilia but one which remarkably takes the form of a step forward—it's an object that exists in the continuum of the subject that it is studying.

I know you liked this film too, so I'll perhaps let you take the baton from my ramblings, because I haven't even begun to talk about De Palma's use of video in this, his close-ups which appear like nothing else in the festival, his total understanding of what's interesting in Rapace's face, of the startling falseness of McAdam's sub-Dressed to Kill simulacrum, the film's perverse and knowing humor and absurdity, its roleplaying, the images within images (him and Ferrara both, loving Skype video calls!), including a mini cellphone cam movie that is pure De Palma and also an advertisement for jeans. What else, what else? Oh, to leave you with another favorite: the film's one split screen sequence, a magnificent anti-set piece, yet so clever, placing a ballet performance in one screen with uninteresting plot mechanics in the other—only to culminate in a murder. Can you tell I'm excited? This film is strange and rich. I'm sorry I can't be more coherent and structured in this, as it appeared a lot of people didn't like if not downright hated or laughed at this movie, which I think is a mistake."

"Ah, Passion. Perhaps not the film of the festival for me (that’s still Like Someone in Love), but certainly the one that most tickled my cinephilia. Like Kiarostami’s film, it’s a wondrous feat (a series of feats, really) of misdirection. Who are these characters who look like Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace and Karoline Herfurth but are actually gimlet-eyed projections from cinema’s past? Abstractions, sure, yet when do abstractions exude such a feeling of heated flesh, of shards of fantasies being moved around the screen like drops of mercury? The layers upon layers of De Palma’s artifice dare us to find out. It’s a crazy, thorny spiral of a movie, not “campy” but funny. Think of McAdams, done up like a parody of Grace Kelly (her blonde hair for some reason looking like a wig) in her wood-paneled office with the word “IMAGE” spelled in red, blocky letters behind her. Or of Rapace ramming her car into a Coke machine (De Palma’s Godardian side is always present), followed by a crying jag and a sudden rain that are, like everything on screen, not what they seem. (A camera movement reveals the fire-alarm sprinkler drenching the character from above, and, of course, the security lenses recording it all.)"

British director Peter Strickland arrived for his first Toronto with his art-house horror movie Berberian Sound Studio, fresh from receiving five star reviews in the UK.

With the film poised to go international, he was plunged into a non-stop round of meetings and interviews.

"Toronto reminds me of school trips to Minehead where you're in some place new and exciting," he told me. "The only problem is you can't escape from the teachers."

At a different stage of his career, Brian De Palma was also working hard. Drumming up interest in his erotic thriller Passion - currently without a distributor in the US or UK - the Scarface and Carrie director held court with the air of a man looking on the bright side on working away from the studios.

"The studios would rather work with young directors they can control," the veteran film-maker said. "They don't want someone like me being old and crotchety and demanding final cut."

VIDEOS FROM TIFF 'PASSION' PREMIERERACHEL ANSWERS THE QUESTION: "WHAT WAS THE MOST DIFFICULT SCENE TO ACT?"[Looking at De Palma] "There's a scene where I have a panic attack. Which I was very very worried about. I'm very glad that you edited around it, [laughter from the crowd] because you make me look like a very subtle actor, [laughs] instead of the one who was having a meltdown on the set when everyone was genuinely worried about my sanity that day. Rightfully so. But I was probably most nervous about making that truthful. But no one will ever know..."

RACHEL ON MAKING 'PASSION': "IT WAS VERY CREATIVELY SATISFYING""It was a lot of fun. Brian gave us the freedom to do whatever we wanted to do. It was very creatively satisfying."

DE PALMA TALKS ABOUT WHY HE COMES TO THE TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL EVERY YEAR"I'm interested in new directors, new locations, new cinematographers, interesting ways to tell stories, and I come here to try to see the new movies every year because I'm an interested spectator, just like everybody else that goes to the movies."

DE PALMA ON RACHEL'S SHOCKING IMPROV LINEAND MORE DETAILS ON: CASTING THE LEADS; KIMBERLY PEIRCE; 'HEAT' REMAKETribute.ca's Bonnie Laufer posted a video interview with Brian De Palma today, and he shared a couple of fun stories about making Passion that had him laughing as he spoke. [Possible mild spoilers here] Providing examples about how Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace sort of took control of building this relationship on screen, De Palma talks about how, after "annihilating" Isabelle (Rapace), Christine (McAdams) comes up to her and says, "Why don't we just kiss and make up?" After laughing a bit, De Palma continues, "And Noomi grabs her like a Mafia Don, sending someone to his death, and really kisses her! I said [putting head in hands], 'Oh, my God'." De Palma told Laufer that was a "Wow" moment, and then continued, "There was another scene which I don't think you can use on your television program. When she [Christine/Rachel] comes in the room to confront Dani... [laughing thinking about it] When she comes in and says, 'We all know what you're after. You're after Isabelle's'-- now my line is 'ass' [the way De Palma wrote it]. Rachel came in and said, 'You're after her cunt.' [A gasp from Laufer] And I went, 'Holy mackerel.'"

"Our little Toronto girl's got a mouth on her," said Laufer, which got De Palma laughing some more. Earlier in the interview, De Palma discusses how he came to cast the two leads. He said another director was considering Rapace for a movie he was making, and Rapace had sent a few DVDs to him. De Palma was watching some of them, and found her really interesting. "She could be dangerous, and vulnerable, and scary." De Palma said that Rapace and McAdams are represented by the same manager, and somebody mentioned Rachel and his eyes lit up: "Rachel!?! Absolutely!"

'MEAN GIRLS'De Palma told the Winnipeg Free Press' Michael Oliveira that "Rachel McAdams is a fantastic actress. I've been watching her for years, but especially thought she'd be good for this part because of seeing her in Mean Girls. She really did an incredible job of playing this very manipulative executive." Oliveira writes that while Rapace has a nude scene, most of the sexual content in the film is subtly implied. "I didn't think (gratuitous sexuality) was necessary," De Palma told Oliveira. "It is erotic but it isn't really explicit." Regarding his lead actresses, De Palma said, "They were not afraid to do anything, basically. They felt very secure and confident in what they were doing and I just gave them the space to interact as exciting and dramatically as possible. They would do it all kinds of different ways and I was sort of led by what was happening."

KEY IDEA FROM CORNEAU FILMBack to Laufer's video interview, De Palma said the key idea from the Alain Corneau film is this: "The worst thing one woman can do to another is humiliate her in public." Laufer asks De Palma about Kimberly Peirce's upcmoming Carrie remake, and De Palma talks about how he has no problem with filmmakers doing remakes, just like plays are constantly reworked. He also reminds her that his Scarface is a remake of a very good Howard Hawks film, and, later, relays a funny story from the making of his version. Back to Peirce: De Palma says he met her in Paris around the time Boys Don't Cry was released, and that they used to go to the theater together around seven or eight years ago.

'HEAT' REMAKE BEING RESET IN NICE, FRANCEAsked what he is working on next, De Palma tells Laufer about the remake of Heat, "a lost movie of the seventies that was written by William Goldman that Burt Reynolds was in. And I think the first day of the shoot, Burt Reynolds slugged the director, so it didn't come out very well. In any event, it's in a casino town, it's about an enforcer. Jason Statham's going to do it, and we're resetting it all in Nice."

RACHEL MCADAMS & ELI ROTH AT TIFF VARIETY STUDIOROTH CAUGHT A SCREENING OF 'PASSION' EARLIER THIS WEEKRachel McAdams and Eli Roth are pictured here from earlier today (Tuesday) at the Variety Studio at TIFF. McAdams did participate in an interview while there, so hopefully this means she will be on the Variety & Ortsbo Live In Toronto broadcast along with Brian De Palma tonight at 7pm eastern. Roth, meanwhile, caught a screening of De Palma's Passion earlier this week, according to The Canadian Press. Roth is at the Toronto fest to promote a new film he co-wrote and appears in, Aftershock, but told Nick Patch, "All I want to do in my free time is see movies. It's such a tease. It's torture, actually, to know that these movies are playing in theatres and you can't go see them." Roth also managed to catch screenings of Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master and Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers.

DE PALMA HAD IDEA INSPIRED BY 'INCEPTION'BUT ABANDONED THAT WHEN HE FOUND AUSTRALIAN COMMERCIAL ONLINEThe picture here is from Toronto on Monday, but the interviews in this story happened at Venice. First, the picture: Brian De Palma at the Hollywood Reporter's TIFF Video Lounge.

Now, the interviews from Venice. De Palma discussed technology and the internet as a source for visual ideas with Loud Vision's Francesca Magini. De Palma mentioned that for the commercial created by the executives in Passion, he had originally come up with an idea inspired by Christopher Nolan's Inception. Here is the passge from the interview:

----------------------------------------

I find it fascinating, the possibility of developing visual forms through the use of new technologies. In "Redacted" all the narrative forms had originated from the web. In this case, the very idea of the commercial is taken from a true story that I found on the Internet: there was a video shot by two girls, one had a cell phone tucked in her back pocket that filmed everyone who turned to look at her ass. This video has been a huge success, especially because it seemed to have been completely made by amateurs. It turns out that the girls were, in fact, two executives of an advertising company and that the video was a real commercial.

It [the internet] provides a wealth of information and images. Do you believe this is an opportunity for enrichment or a threat? I think it is an extremely useful tool; it is like a huge library, and during the making of a film, it's really valuable because it not only allows you to quickly search information on the location, the actors, but also to find inspiration and ideas. You need to choose what is most functional to the story you want to tell. I had several ideas for the ad to be included in the film; originally, I thought of a commercial inspired by "Inception," which I loved: it was an extremely sophisticated and particular idea, but it did not convince me at all. I needed something more concrete and real, so I continued to do research and when I found the video shot by the girls I thought it was perfect and I used it.

"MAKE 3 BATMANS TO MAKE 'INCEPTION'; WE'VE LOST THE BEAUTY OF FILM"In a Venice interview with Le Monde's Aureliano Tonet, De Palma again referred to Inception, this time in the context of how in Hollywood, you have to make so many films you don't really want to make in order to make that one special one. Here is a passage from the article:

-------------------------------------------

"In the street, nobody looks at the trees or the sun. We're glued to our screens. For the films in the movie, I was inspired by an amateur clip that was posted on the web in Australia and sex videos shot with smartphones, with a subjective point-of-view."

A reference to the Ponzi scheme indicates, moreover, how these cathedrals of glass are fragile: "The economic crisis does not scare me. Hollywood has always been in crisis," says De Palma, who failed to achieve his last two projects, respectively on the scandals of Jessica Lynch [Print The Legend] and John Edwards [Tabloid]. "I've worked in all genres; I've experienced the triumphs and disasters, the independents and the major studios. Make three "Batman" in order to make Inception, like Christopher Nolan, I have neither the time nor the inclination. A blockbuster, it is primarily a series of endless meetings ... I prefer to shoot in Europe, with small budgets. We lost the beauty of film. I try to find it," sighs the admirer of Steven Soderbergh and Wes Anderson.

Still suffering setbacks he suffered in the 2000s, he keeps a grudge against the press: "As soon as Terrence Malick makes a film, it's a miracle in your eyes ... My films are often misunderstood, probably because I am a very visual director." I dare to ask if Passion, his duet for actresses (Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace), can be read as an insight into the Hollywood psyche: "After seeing the film, my agent told me that it was like attending a day's work in his office," he said, grinning.